IIT student suicide case: SIT seeks disciplinary action against cops for failing to spot suicide note

The report said the police officers of Powai police station visited the hostel room of Darshan Solanki on February 11, the day he jumped from the hostel building, but did not spot the suicide note which had the words ‘Arman has killed me’ scrawled at the back of a question paper in Darshan’s room.

The SIT found the suicide note three weeks later on March 3, when the team visited the hostel room to conduct a panchnama that lasted several hours. It was based on this suicide note that the SIT–formed two weeks after the suicide–filed a chargesheete against Darshan’s batchmate Arman Khatri.

A source in the know of the matter said SIT’s enquiry report mentioned that although several officers from Powai police station visited the room after the suicide, “None of the people spotted the suicide note scribbled on the question paper that had fallen by Darshan’s desk, which indicates negligence on the part of the officers.”

The source added that despite knowing that the suicide of an IIT student from a backward caste could be sensitive case, the police officers didn’t even seize the medicines and other articles kept in the room as part of the panchnama.

The source added that it was this negligence in finding the suicide note on day one that led to disbelief by Darshan’s family and others, when the note was eventually found three weeks after the suicide.

“Questions were raised about how the initial police team didn’t find the suicide note and the veracity of the suicide note found by the SIT was brought into question. Eventually, the CID, which did the handwriting analysis, confirmed that the writing belonged to Darshan,” said the source.

The SIT registered a chargesheet against Khatri last month. The chargesheet, that runs into 473 pages, has booked Khatri under relevant sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act along with charges of abetment of suicide and criminal intimidation of the IPC. The chargesheet relies mainly on the suicide note written by Solanki.

The chargesheet filed before a special court concluded in its probe that it was Solanki’s poor academic record, coupled with the threat from his batchmate Khatri, that led Solanki to take the extreme step on February 11. Solanki’s parents had alleged that their son faced caste discrimination at the IIT campus, which drove him to die by suicide.